Maritime College mourns the passing of  Dr. Mark Lincoln Chadwin,  former Chairman of the Department of Global Business and Transportation at Maritime College. He passed away on May 20 in Sarasota, Florida.  After retiring from Maritime in 2005, Dr. Chadwin continued to teach an online course in cross-cultural issues in international business for SUNY Maritime.  A brilliant educator and historian, he brought a unique perspective of the world at large to the Maritime community.

Dr. Chadwin joined Maritime in 2002 after eight years at Baruch College where he was the founding director of the Weissman Center of International Business.  In that role, he  was the editor of International Business in New York City, a biennial directory.  He entered academia in 1980, specializing in international business and maritime trade at Old Dominion University. During that period, he wrote Ocean Container Transportation: An Operational Perspective, with James A. Pope and Wayne K. Talley, (Taylor and Francis: New York and London, 1990).

Earlier in his career, Dr. Chadwin studied at Columbia University and as part of his graduate work, wrote a doctoral dissertation about the Century Group, later known as the Fight For Freedom Committee, which tried to move the United States to enter the Second World War before Pearl Harbor. That dissertation eventually became The Hawks of World War II (University of North Carolina Press: Chapel Hill, 1968), the first book-length treatment of American interventionists before the Second World War. That book was later published in paperback as The Warhawks: American Interventionists Before Pearl Harbor (Norton: New York, 1970). Based on citations and references, that book remains important in understanding that period of American history.

After completing his Ph.D., Dr. Chadwin worked as an assistant to W. Averell Harriman for about six years, serving as a speechwriter and oral historian for Harriman during the period when Harriman was a key adviser on foreign policy to President Johnson and the Democratic Party. Much of his work during this period is available in the Library of Congress as part of Harriman’s papers, and the interviews have been frequently used by other biographers and historians.

Dr. Chadwin went on to work as National Security Adviser to Senator Birch E. Bayh, Jr., Democrat of Indiana.  When Bayh decided not to seek the Democratic nomination for president after his wife was diagnosed with cancer, Dr. Chadwin moved on to become Executive Director of the Illinois Economic and Fiscal Commission.

In that position, he was responsible for redefining an element of the role of the state legislature. He created the concept of legislative program evaluation, now a huge area of legislative activity nationwide. In 1974, he was co-founder of the Legislative Program Evaluation Section of the National Conference of State Legislatures. Much of his specific work in the area of work-incentive programs during that era, as well as work he did as a senior research associate at The Urban Institute from 1976 to 1980, shaped welfare reform during the Reagan and Clinton areas.